Speak Loudly and Carry a Toothpick

The question, for the entire campaign, about a hypothetical Romney Administration’s foreign policy has been: would it actually implement the “omni-directional belligerence” that he campaigned on? Or would he “speak loudly and carry a toothpick” – announce a variety of belligerent policies and then not actually follow through with any action when his bluffs are called.

If the third debate is any indication, we can now conclude: it’s the latter. Over and over again, Romney has made it clear: America must be the leader. We must be the organizer. We must stand on principle. We must be strong, clear, firm. But: that doesn’t mean we should actually do anything in particular. The point is: talk more, and louder, and don’t worry how our words will be received, because if we talk clearly, loudly, and with principles, then we’ve done our job. We’ve announced our “objective.” Which means the opposite of “subjective.” Which means what we say will happen.

There’s no there there. Even on topics where he’s supposedly forcefully disagreed with the Obama Administration, the Romney who showed up tonight disagreed with presentation, and had nothing to say about substance. On Syria: we don’t need to use our military, we just need leadership, to get the opposition organized. On the missile defense for Poland: he objected to the “way” we dealt with it, not necessarily the result. On Israel, he objected to the “tension” in the relationship, but not to any particular policy we’re following. On Iraq, he didn’t want to leave more troops in place; he wanted to leave on our terms. And on and on and on. His objections were entirely to symbolism – Obama should have visited Israel earlier; he shouldn’t have been “silent” when the Green Movement happened; we should indict Ahmadinejad for hate speech; and so forth.

There’s a decent list of possible objections to President Obama’s foreign policy, but Mitt Romney didn’t make any of them – neither the kinds of objections Daniel Larison and other writers at this magazine want to hear, nor the kinds of objections that he’s been campaigning on. Instead, he seemed to be following Bill Kristol’s advice:

There’s no need for Mitt Romney to flyspeck Barack Obama’s foreign policy record. Voters are aware of the deficiencies of Obama’s foreign policy. In any case, Obama is not going to win the presidency on the strength of his foreign policy. So Romney doesn’t have to mount a detailed critique of various Obama foreign policies. He has to stipulate that all is not turning out as Obama claimed it would, that all is not well in the state of the world. Then, even more important, Romney has to demonstrate that he can be trusted to steer the American ship of state in a sounder direction and with a steadier hand. This will require setting forth the core principles he will follow—principles of American strength and leadership, of standing by our allies and of standing up to enemies—and then explaining how, in general terms, he will execute a foreign policy based on these principles.

In other words: say nothing substantive and promise everything will go better if you’re in charge.

Of course, it’s still possible that a President Romney secretly wants to engage in a massive escalation of our interventions around the world, but that just feels like a weird read of his character. What seems much more plausible to me is that Romney would just be a terrible diplomat, because, apart from resurrecting the Free Trade Area of the Americas, he has no interest in foreign policy. He treats foreign policy as a matter of domestic marketing, and he believes that the people of the United States want our country to be really obnoxious, but not actually take any serious risks.

Unfortunately, the world is unlikely to follow Romney’s script – there is inherent risk in treating foreign policy as cavalierly as Romney clearly does. Take a look at the Bush Administration’s North Korea policy if you want to see what obnoxiousness as a strategy looks like. But, you know, who even remembers that North Korea became a nuclear power on Bush’s watch? What people remember is: Bush “confronted” North Korea, and denounced the Clinton Administration’s “appeasement.” If they even remember that.

President Obama, like the first President Bush, has pursued a foreign policy that an anti-interventionist should hate. But at least he has a foreign policy, and, on the strength of both his performance in office and his conduct of the debate, he clearly cares about it. Foreign policy is one of the few areas where the President has the overwhelming preponderance of power, largely unchecked by Congress or the courts. It’s probably a good idea to have a President who has given a little thought to how that power might best be used effectively, even if he tends to use it too aggressively.

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15 Responses to Speak Loudly and Carry a Toothpick

I don’t know. My guess is that Romney knows this election isn’t going to turn on foreign policy and he didn’t want to do anything tonight that would make the final weeks about foreign policy. In that I think he succeeded. Nothing that happened tonight changes the conversation, and Romney can go out tomorrow on the stump and pretend like tonight never even happened.

Therefore I think it’s a stretch to read too much into the debate and make any conclusions about what Romney thinks about foreign policy. That’s to our loss as an electorate, but it’s the nature of the campaign beast at this point.

This is a pretty good re-cap. Romney’s been mouthing off about “unravelling foreign policy” for what – months now? But when he gets a real shot at nailing it all down, he just stands there agreeing with Obama’s every move.

“President Obama, like the first President Bush, has pursued a foreign policy that an anti-interventionist should hate. But at least he has a foreign policy, and, on the strength of both his performance in office and his conduct of the debate, he clearly cares about it. Foreign policy is one of the few areas where the President has the overwhelming preponderance of power, largely unchecked by Congress or the courts. It’s probably a good idea to have a President who has given a little thought to how that power might best be used effectively, even if he tends to use it too aggressively.”

Right on. It makes me sad to agree. But at the same time, we are waging unmanned war elsewhere. Disgusting. Romney’s response to the use of drones made me just as uncomfortable as what we are already doing with our drones.

The night convinced me that Romney just would not have the guts (as well as interest) to implement a neoconservative foreign policy. He’ll low key it as much as he can, as he did in the debate. If he were Altas carrying the earth/globe on his shoulders, he’d be spattered beneath it by January 30th, 2013.

Of course, it’s still possible that a President Romney secretly wants to engage in a massive escalation of our interventions around the world, but that just feels like a weird read of his character

Candidate Bush in 2000 promised a more humble foreign policy. The hardcore neocons had mostly supported McCain in the primary campaign. Bush’s foreign policy advisors in the campaign included some realists (though plenty of neocons, to be sure). Once in office, he appointed Powell, Rice, Armitage, and O’Neill as, so to speak, voices of reason.

And then… Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the neocons were plotting an invasion of Iraq from Bush’s very first National Security Council meeting — eight months before the September 11th attacks. Iraq, contrary to popular opinion, was not some rash reaction to that trauma, but a long-sought objective exploiting al-Qaeda and WMD as useful, if totally bogus, pretexts.

Now, with Romney, we get someone who:

— is not even bothering to promise a restrained foreign policy
— has a stable of foreign policy advisors which is neocon virtually to a man
— has no experience with and little knowledge of foreign affairs — just like 2000 Bush — and thus is vulnerable to manipulation by crafty courtiers
— is a personal friend of Netanyahu
— may (or may not, to be fair) be influenced by his religion’s strident theological Zionism, just as Bush was influenced by Dispensational “Christian” Zionism
— is beholden to the Jewish Likudnik plutocrats (most prominently, but hardly exclusively, Sheldon Adelson) funding his campaign
— must appease, and cement the trust of, the megachurch hoi polloi in the GOP’s “base,” who are wary of Mormons and do not like Romney personally; a war with Iran might be a less “controversial” (from an inside-the-Beltway perspective) way of whipping up the rubes than, say, nominating a judge to the Supreme Court who promises to overturn Roe v. Wade, or cracking down on Chamber of Commerce members who profit from hiring immigrants (legal and illegal) and free trade

The prospect of a Romney administration, at least with regard to foreign policy, should not be met with shoulder-shrugging, as if to say “He can’t possibly this [expletive] that he is saying.”

If a man is to be judged by the company he keeps, how can we assume anything other than that he will be an omni-directoinal belligerent? You don’t think Romney is brave enough to ‘follow through’? HE doesn’t have to be.

Obviously, he didn’t need courage to personally fire everyone who got laid off or had their job outsourced during his corporate takeovers? He had ‘people’ to do that. And if he’s President, he’ll have ‘people’ to plan and carry out a bombing campaign on Iran. Or continue drone strikes in Yemen. Or send arms to rebels in Syria. Contrary to the common perception, it doesn’t take a whole lot of bravery to use someone else’s money to send someone else’s kids to fight in someone else’s country.

Contrary to this notion, it often takes much more courage and will to NOT go to war, as Obama has learned both in Libya (where he buckled to the interventionists in his administration), Syria and Iran (where the siren’s song of the glories of war are constantly heard off in the distance).

It would be very difficult to disprove Noah’s points. He’s the only one here making references to any specific Romney’s connections and dependencies in the area of foreign policy. To state the obvious, since at least 1988 elections, it’s been going from bad to worse. The two party system ceased to be representative government.

It’s true that Romney was relatively substance free in last night’s debate, but what about Obama? He spent most of his time attacking Romney. At least Romeny called Obama out for it and said that attacking him isn’t an agenda. But unforturnatley this debate as a whole was relatively substance free. In reality, what could we expect? Did anybody really think that either candidate would say that he would definitely bomb Iran, or do a no-fly zone over Syria, or keep tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan indefinitley? There was also too much talk about domestic policy issues, all of which we have heard many times before and which didn’t seem to be in much of a coherent order. There were a few times in which Bob Shieffer tried to egg Romeny on to sound too bellicose, but fortunately Romney called his bluff.

Foreign policy rarely sways an election, but it should. As much as Bush blew things domestically, MOST of America’s troubles can be attributed to the Bush foreign policy. Allow me two simple points. 1) The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost a huge amount of money, money that the USA could ill afford. 2) These wars caused the price of oil to go from $25 to $100 a barrel, which not only help drive the US into a Great Recession, but caused the global price of oil to skyrocket, which caused a global recession. It would be difficult to come up with an exact number to give the cost of those foreign follies, but few could argue they did not have some sort of negative effect upon the economy.

I think Romney more than proved that he isn’t Presidential material. He wasn’t prepared to debate and he isn’t prepared to lead. It’s a shame a real candidate couldn’t be found. Obviously, after this election the GOP is going to need restructure.

Arrrghg, but it dishearting an old sailor to a certain degree to hear the two of them mouth baloney as if it were scripture.

Of course, by mere definition, an old sailor has been around the globe a few times and has hopefully sussed out at least a few of the tactics of those who would lead and therefore should not be dismayed.

I.e. It ain’t that I don’t understand what was occuring.

I.e. the two of them were trying to sway the few idiots who had not the intellect to yet instinctively make a decision, nor the grit to educate themselves to the point where the could make a decision, I.e. the “undecided.”

And I gets that they were speaking to them emphatically in small simple words, repeating them over and over so as to get through the defective thought processes and give them enough to go on to make a decision.

But it occurs to me that it’s a strange thing that we gots a system that requires that the most important decisions be made by the least qualified.

And it’s not that I don’t want to give the mentally challenged a place in our society here, it’s just that it makes me a little nervous to entrust the piloting of the whole operation to the intellectually damaged. For fear of bad results. Of which we’s had plenty of recent examples.

But, still, not all of us are retarded nor fans of the baseball nor the football and so were tuned into the “d-bate’ and as such, it seems to me that it might have been nice if they had addressed the competent adults to a certain degree.

Of course that Romney’s a lying sack of shite, all ya gots to do is observe the deadness that pools in the dark of his eyes. There ain’t no spark in there, though the rest of his face is desperately signaling away.

But it’s sad to see Obama, who seems to be an actual human being with the conscience of yer actual normal neighbor, playing the same game.

Because, not to get all Freudian on ya, it’s been my experience that, like systems of mind, most systems come about and are maintained fer a purpose.

So what I’m thinking we should be asking ourselfs is, “what purpose is our current system serving?” Or maybe more accurately, “who is our current system serving?”

I.e. A system for selecting governmental representitives what splits the country into two waring halfs, no matter if that makes sense according to the two halves true interests or not. A system what puts the power of selecting the representitives in the least qualified. A system in which there’s so many voices yammering that, as I think someone must have said, ” to see the truth in front of yer face is jsut about an entire life’s work

. I.e. a system in which no one really knows what the holy crap is going on.

So who might be profiting–and of course ya also have to ask who might have the means to perpetuate–a system such as this?

That’s the question I wants answered.

And I ain’t totally suggesting–though I ain’t totally not suggesting–that this is a conscious conspiracy, The systems of the mind what arise, arise unintended. But they serve a purpose and therefor are maintained.

It might be something similar to this as applies to our electoral system.

“The night convinced me that Romney just would not have the guts (as well as interest) to implement a neoconservative foreign policy. He’ll low key it as much as he can, as he did in the debate. If he were Altas carrying the earth/globe on his shoulders, he’d be spattered beneath it by January 30th, 2013.”

First, as has been pointed out above (and many times by others), a President generally doesn’t need courage to go to war. He won’t suffer, and he ‘has people for that’.

Second, the very fact that he’s not up to being president makes war more likely; he’ll look to war to make up for his deficiencies, and to court the support of those who profit by war.

Third, the man is a vulture capitalist. He has been involved in a few genuinely productive ventures, but (as far as we can tell) made most of his money by asset stripping and fraud (borrowing money through a corporation, moving it to another corporation, and defaulting on debts). As the Bush II administration proved, war can be the ultimate vulture capitalism.